We've installed the Deco P7 system in our home today, replacing two older routers. Everything works fine out of the box: Youtube, Twitch etc. But Netflix refuses to connect on phones, tablets and computers. We can't even open the Netflix website. Only when I set up a VPN connection can we get through. I have tried turning off the Anti-Virus options in the app to see if that somehow blocks it, but it doesn't help.

We've also experienced some drops in online games, but that seems unrelated. Can't find anything about the above online. Any tips or suggestions?

Regards,

m4v21

Edit: Changed a bunch of things, including switching to AP mode and turning off 5Ghz. Nothing helped. Put everything back the way it was and suddenly Netflix works. A mystery to me and quite annoying as I have no idea what originally caused this.

Edit2: As the Deco works with its own DHCP pool (and things like cameras, NAS etc were originally set to 192.168.1.xxx in our network) I tried changing it to AP mode again so I could use our base IP pool. Netflix stopped working on all devices immediately again and I for the life of me cannot make any sense of this. Changed the system back to Router mode again and we are back in business with Netflix. Ended up putting all our network devices in TP Link's IP pool now so everything at least works again.

If anybody can see any logic to the Netflix situation (again: both app and URL are blocked), then I would very much appreciate input. Completely unrelated probably but also annoying: my son is reporting significantly slower connections in his online games and more lag on his wired (!) connection. In the old situation he would be gaming around 20/25ms, but now it is close to 40ms with occassional spikes.

I think we need to tease out some of what you have written in edit 2 as there may be something wrong there, but I’m not sure what from your wording.... Have you got more than one device issuing DHCP addresses on your network?? You don’t normally want that, but if you do they must issue from different ranges but have the same router, DNS etc. DHCP pools do not work as you described - you are not ‘in’ one or another- they are a range of addresses a DHCP server hands out. If you have two separate IP address ranges on your network you are going to get some odd issues.

Both DHCP range and Deco IP address are configurable on recent firmware, so if you want to stick to 192.168.1.x you can. Most useful if you have static configured devices that are a pain to change.

Something must have been issuing DHCP address when in AP mode? Another router? What is being handed out for DNS? Sometimes ISPs who are caching/colocating streaming services like Netflix will block other sources of the same data and non-local DNS servers can cause geolocation to give you the wrong service as local. Rare and obscure, but possible....

Have you got more than one device issuing DHCP addresses on your network?? You don’t normally want that, but if you do they must issue from different ranges but have the same router, DNS etc. DHCP pools do not work as you described - you are not ‘in’ one or another- they are a range of addresses a DHCP server hands out. If you have two separate IP address ranges on your network you are going to get some odd issues.

Yes, I do. We have a modem that is provided by our ISP, which is the main access point for our fiber optic network. Wifi is turned off on this. It has IP address 192.168.1.1 and issues DHCP addresses to the network in the 192.168.1.xxx range. In the old situation I had two separate routers (an Asus on the ground floor and a Linksys on the second floor) set up in bridge mode. They were both connected via wire to the base modem. Anything connected to them or to the base modem via a switch was issued a 192.168.1.xxx address.

When I purchased the Deco system I removed the two wireless routers and replaced them by the Deco system. First I tried to use it in AP mode, as that seemed like the best fit and easiest transitation. It did indeed distribute addresses in the 192.168.1.xxx range, but as described above Netflix did not work. Switching to normal mode makes the Deco dsitribute addresses from the 192.168.68.xxx pool, so indeed a second pool and not ideal.

Perhaps worth mentioning at this point two things I find strange: 1) I can't reach the base modem anymore through my browser, neither in AP nor in normal Deco mode. I really should try hooking my laptop up directly to the modem but it is difficult to reach and does not seem to be the bottle neck at the moment. 2) Any devices that are wire connected to our network are issues addresses from the 68-pool, so by Deco's DHCP-service. Is that normal when for instance the laptop and closest deco are both connected to a switch that is directly wire connected to the base modem?

Both DHCP range and Deco IP address are configurable on recent firmware, so if you want to stick to 192.168.1.x you can. Most useful if you have static configured devices that are a pain to change.

That sounds ideal, but I can't seem to get this working. In the app if I look at DHCP settings then I cannot change the IP-range to the 192.168.1.xxx range. Anything in that range I enter results in 'invalid start IP' or 'invalid end IP'. If I go the the LAN IP settings and try this, then it says that 'the LAN IP address and WAN IP address cannot be in the same subnet'. I am no networking specialist though, so perhaps I am trying the wrong things here.

Sometimes ISPs who are caching/colocating streaming services like Netflix will block other sources of the same data and non-local DNS servers can cause geolocation to give you the wrong service as local. Rare and obscure, but possible....

In the old situation we never had any problems connecting to Netflix, so I don't see why a different wireless router would have such an impact on this. It was not only the app that wasn't functioning, but we could not reach the website either.

Strange thing is that we are now seeing slower connections in games with occassional lag spikes and disconnects, which we did not have with the old setup. But perhaps this is completely unrelated.

Any further input from your side would be much appreciated. Thank you for your time.

EDIT: Okay, the fact that the base modem could not be reached kept bothering me. I had reset that one twice before, but this morning dug it out and made a direct wired connection with my laptop. Strangely enough now I couldn't reach Netflix through there (I had disconnected all other wires going into our system) while it was working through wireless minutes before. And I could still not approach the base modem's user interface. So both those things did seem to point to a problem with the base modem. I gave it another hard reset (third time though), and after rebooting I could finally approach it through 192.168.1.1. I then hooked the rest of the system back up, changed Deco to AP mode and everything - including Netflix - is now working fine.

I am still not entirely sure what could have caused this behaviour. It is too much of a coincidence that it started the moment I hooked up the Deco. And the fact that Netflix did work through VPN and did work when Deco was in router mode makes it all very weird. But for now it is all working as intended, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way. Thanks for your time.

3. Please use traceroute command and show us the results. https://www.wikihow.com/Traceroute

Hi Kevin, thanks for your message. Please see the other reply above that I just posted for some additional details on our setup. The system is now still set up to distribute addresses from its own DHCP pool, but at least we can use netflix on all our devices now. When I change the system to AP mode it will probably stop working again, but right now I can't test this as it will stress out three other people in this household :) I will post the requested screen shots from our current situation, as that still does not look entirely normal to me. If you would like me to also do this for the AP situation, then I can do so in one or two days.

Thank you and I look forward to hearing back from you.

EDIT: As indicated in my other posting we now managed to get everything working under the base modem's DHCP. I ran all the above tests again just now and they still give the same results. Should that be cause for concern then please do let me know. Thanks again!

DNS is working. (nslookup) Ping does not reach netflix.com, which is to be expected after looking at the traceroute... Traceroute shows that the problem is not in your network. The first hop (192.168.68.1) is your router and the routing fails after 130.244.200.173

The LAN IP of Deco P7 can be changed, and it can work as a DHCP server; cause it works in router mode, you can disable the DHCP server of the front-end device( modem) and the set P7 up as the router mode and change the IP to 192.168.1.x;

Note：Open deco app, go to more-advanced-LAN IP to change it.

Meanwhile, you can change the QoS to standard and clear all high priority.

Looking at your traces here, I note that you are using Google DNS (8.8.8.8) to perform your recursive lookups. Whilst this kind of service can add performance, they (Google DNS, OpenDNS, etc) occasionally have wierd/inconsistent effects with CDNs that rely on geolocation to give you the nearest/best server. I've been bitten by this once myself. Particularly if you're not in the same country that their DNS servers are in. (and I think versatel/tele2 is based in the Netherlands?) It would be worth checking if using your ISP's DNS server provides a different answer to the lookup for netflix.com

ie:

nslookup
server <ISP DNS>
netflix.com

Is Google DNS set up on your PC, or issued by DHCP? If DHCP, is it the same on both DECO and your router?

Thanks for your message. Turning off DHCP does not seem to be an option in our ISP's modem, so I am unable to try this. But I also don't think the problem lies in that area, as I will explain in a bit. I did also already try resetting QoS and removing all priorities, but the problem returns intermittently.

From my tests it seems that there is a problem with either my provider's DNS server or something is messed up in the DNS-settings of my ISP's modem. When I use Google DNS-servers then everything is fine (same as working through VPN), so there is a problem in the resolution of specifically that IP-address. Possibly more, but I have not found any more.

I have been in touch with our ISP's service desk and they are getting an engineer to call me back. Unfortunately this can take multiple days, but there seems to be a good chance that this is not related to the installation of the Deco P& modems and these problems started the same day by pure coincidence. I will update when I have further feedback from our provider.

Looking at your traces here, I note that you are using Google DNS (8.8.8.8) to perform your recursive lookups. Whilst this kind of service can add performance, they (Google DNS, OpenDNS, etc) occasionally have wierd/inconsistent effects with CDNs that rely on geolocation to give you the nearest/best server. I've been bitten by this once myself. Particularly if you're not in the same country that their DNS servers are in. (and I think versatel/tele2 is based in the Netherlands?) It would be worth checking if using your ISP's DNS server provides a different answer to the lookup for netflix.com

ie:

nslookup
server <ISP DNS>
netflix.com

Is Google DNS set up on your PC, or issued by DHCP? If DHCP, is it the same on both DECO and your router?

Hi AJ,

Thanks for your further feedback. The posted screenshots were from the situation where I managed to get Netflix working. The only way I could do this at that time, was by using Google's DNS as the DNS-server within the Deco app settings. So the P7 modems were configured in router mode with DHCP and set to use Google DNS. If I used my ISP's DNS, then we could not get through. Hard resetting the ISP modem did result in a few days of it working normally, but then the problem occurred again.

When I use my ISP's DNS server at the moment that Netflix does not work for us, then it looks like this:

Setting it to Google DNS then results in the screenshot I poster earlier.

As stated in my other message of today I believe the problem may in fact be in the modem of our ISP or its DNS settings. When we can't access Netflix I can't reach the ISP modem internally either. When I hard reset this then everything goes back to normal (can access both modem and netflix) and stays like this for a few days.

Hopefully the ISP tech support will get back to us soon so they can look in the log files of the router (the admin console is limited for me). I'll let you know if they have anything useful to say about this.